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I am looking for someone to help clarify the 'stacktrace' of interactions that occur when a client interacts with a smart contract.

Clearly, one has to submit a transaction to a miner, who then has to locate the contract by address (by using his/her own local copy of the blockchain?), and complete the computation set out in the contract.

Is the entire contract then re-written once again into the blockchain with the outputs representing the output of the computation that has taken place?

J-B
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billett
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1 Answers1

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Indeed the miner locates a contract by using their local copy of the blockchain.

Is the entire contract then re-written once again into the blockchain with the outputs representing the output of the computation that has taken place?

Contracts are immutable. But each contract can have a "hard disk", called storage, and that's where the outputs of computations can be written.

Technically:

The web3.js Javascript API Contract Methods are a way to interact with contracts.

JSON-RPC is a lower-level way of interacting with contracts.

Community
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eth
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  • Ok thanks - is the storage located within the original block in which the contract was mined? – billett Feb 11 '16 at 20:02
  • Kind of, it's via pointers to trees. Each block has a "state root" which contains accounts. Each account has a "storage root". Overview at http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/268/ethereum-block-architecture – eth Feb 11 '16 at 20:29
  • Fantastic links & description with pictures. +1 – billett Feb 11 '16 at 21:41